Hour of Code prepares students for a lifetime

It seems simple enough: little kids playing an Angry Birds video game, moving the protagonist bird through a maze to catch the snorting, wart-covered pig.

But this week, in places such as Mill Valley and Ross, elementary school children didn't have the luxury of a joystick or control pad to catch the bad piggie. They had to maneuver their way through the maze by creating code.

"It was hard," said Teddy Chin, a third-grader at Old Mill School. "You had turns, you had to move back, move forward, etc., etc."

Difficulty aside, 8-year-old Teddy caught the pig.

It was all part of the nationwide Hour of Code campaign to expose children to computer programming during Computer Science Education Week, which ends today.

Endorsed by President Obama and supported with involvement from major tech players such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg and Microsoft's Bill Gates, Hour of Code was spearheaded by Code.org, an organization focused on expanding computer science education in schools.

As was the case in much of the country, some Marin County schools participated. Ross School District had their students code for hour on Thursday. MV Gate, which is a Mill Valley-based, PTA-offshoot organization that offers extracurricular learning experiences, hosted an Hour of Code event Monday at Old Mill School. That's where Teddy, and his 7-year-old sister, Caitlin, had their first computer programming experience.

"There's a tremendous hunger, on the part of kids, to find the appropriate integration of computer science into education," said MV Gate director John Pearce. "Computer science belongs in what kids, from kindergarten on up, are learning."

The Ross School District board agrees. This fall, Ross School, a K-8 school, began integrating computer programming into its curriculum, beginning with second grade.

"You can start as early as kindergarten," said Ross superintendent Chi Kim. "What you really want to do is get them to think as a program: how many steps to the left, how many steps to the right. It's just another language."

After initial exposure in second grade, Ross's third-graders will integrate computer programming with robotics class, in which students will program the movements of Lego-based robots they have built.

Considering how prevalent coding has become in the workforce, Kim said computer programming is as important, if not more, than any other skill children can learn in school.

"When we're talking about college and career readiness, and that so many of the jobs require (computer programming skills), we should teach it to them as early as we can," Kim said.

That's a primary objective for MV Gate, Pearce said.

"We think that computer science is something that has a place in everyone's education," Pearce said. "It is so intimately interwoven into every profession's future."

And based on the response to Monday's Hour of Code — 120 people signed up, and a waiting list formed — he envisions plenty more events exposing children to coding.

The first one appears to have already made an impact.

Ted Chin, the father of Old Mill Students Teddy and Caitlin, said he doesn't let his children watch television or play on the computer during weekdays, but he made an exception this week. The day after their Hour of Code experience, Teddy and Caitlin were on the computer at home, doing more coding online.

"I was surprised how well my kids liked it," Chin said. "I was actually wondering if they would be into it at such a young age."

It's even causing him to re-consider the house rules on playing video games.

"I don't mind them playing this kind of video game," he said, "if they're learning how to interact and to program."